It was great to meet J-Monkey, Umber-ala, Red Cherry, Ha-ha-smile, Sunny, Ji-Kitty, Jay the Belle, Sue Perman, and Hong-kong last night (and of course it's always good to see Chokey, Mirror, and Y-Handy!)
Usually I try to sum up some of the points that I made in class, and get the homework started. So...
a) Children do not just learn. They develop. We know this because they do not simply learn more and more words. The word meanings develop.
b) At first, words are really something like GESTURES. They serve to get attention. That's why words like "Hi!" and "Hello" don't have much grammar, and it's also why they generally have strong DOWN intonation.
c) But names do more than this. They refer to unique objects. However, because there are more objects than names, names always contain some kind of GENERALIZATION. In English, we tend to use the plural to generalize, as in "I like apples". Korean is not like this.
d) We can refer to things that do not exist. For example, we can talk about imaginary characters, idealized objects, and abstract concepts. But when we do this with children we often find that they are thinking much more concretely than we are. This is particularly true of foreign languages, where they are often only thinking of the sound of the word, or attaching it like a label to a Korean meaning.
e) Our task is to show the child how English meanings are both linked to and distinct from Korean meanings, rather the way an English-speaking "avatar" or "imaginary friend" is linked to and distinct from the real Korean child, and his/her Korean friends.
f) 어마 is one person with many names. But 기능 is one name with many meanings. It can mean "skill" but it can also mean "function". In our class, we use it to mean "metafunction", that is, whole groups of communicative and even non-communicative functions.
g) We will call the communicative functions "speech" functions. And we'll call the noncommunicative ones "thinking" functions. So this class is going to be about SPEECH functions and THINKING functions and how they get integrated.
Then I try to get the homework started. Here is Hong-Kong's homework and also Umber-alla's.
What exactly is "the problem" or "the question" of Thinking and Speech? Is it...
a) Is there thinking? Is there speech? Is there a link between thinking and speech?
b) What is thinking? What is speech? What is the distinction between thinking and speech?
c) Why is thinking (especially reading!) so much like speech? How did speech become rational, the way that thinking is?
And what about 혼잣말? Is it thinking or speech?
Hong-kong and Umber-alla! Can you answer?
dk